In my previous blog, I mentioned about what are the
important points a CRM consultant should keep in mind before implementing his
project. Out of those one of the key elements was to discuss about CRM implementation
with IT team so that they agree to provide all required infrastructural help
like SERVER, DB, and SECURITY etc. for a smooth efficient implementation of
CRM.
In a near perfect situation they might get ready to provide you whatever
you want. But what if, during the discussion with IT team you realized that the
IT team is not equipped enough to provide you minimum infrastructural support
which is necessary to make CRM a success.
What will you do? Will you stop the
project or will you compromise? Perhaps no.
You as a consultant should never surrender in a situation
like this especially when you have a power in your hand called CLOUD.
You have
to then sell the idea of how cloud can make life easier for the organization.
In this blog I am going to discuss that how C on C, that is
CRM on CLOUD can help an organization to start using CRM without bothering
about required IT infra on premises.
So, what is cloud computing? It is a way of providing
computing services like application server, database, storage, security, networking,
analytics etc. over the internet. It is a kind of plug and play culture where
you don’t have to think about any infrastructural hardware elements for your
application to run.
Now let’s see the benefits your client will get if they opt
for Cloud.
Lower initial investment & faster deployment:
As I
stated, cloud is a ready to go technology where everything related to your
application, like application server, database, firewall, security, load
balancer etc. are provided by the cloud service provider.
When you opt for cloud,
there is no need to set up expensive hardware and infrastructure at your
premises. Hence, the initial investment cost is also less.
Added with that,
because of its plug and play nature, you can host your application on cloud and
make it live in as low as half an hour. Cloud deployment is really fast which
saves valuable time of your client. They can focus more on fine tuning the CRM
application rather than spending energy on setting up infra for the project.
Data storage and Backup:
Setting up data centre is
one of the most expensive tasks that any company takes up while building their
IT system. If you opt for cloud, you don’t even need to bother about working on
the same. Cloud allows you to safely
store your data and make it accessible whenever required.
Not only that, most
of the cloud vendors have a disaster recovery plan as well so you will never
lose your data.
This in itself is one of the top most selling point that why
one should opt for cloud. On Premise system will certainly not be able to
provide you this much data security and back up.
Elastic in nature:
Yes, you read it correct. Cloud is
elastic in nature that means, you can easily scale up or scale down your
application based on situation. For example, if you think that during Christmas
or Thanksgiving days, your centre needs to access your CRM application a lot,
then you scale up your application to cater a large number of users. Whereas,
if you think that during summer, the activity will be minimal, then you can
easily scale it down to cater only few hundreds of users.
Thus cloud gives you
the provision of pay as you use, by scaling up and down, and can help you to
save money as well.
Tight Security:
Cloud, even though available on internet and
accessible from anywhere, has its own built-in security system which allows
only legitimate users to access the application.
By using technologies like VPC
(Virtual Private cloud), firewall etc., it ensures that the application is
accessible to only those who are meant to use it.
So, I have touched upon all the benefits of hosting CRM on
cloud. But I am sure there must be some limitations as well. I invite my
readers to provide their valuable comments in the comment section about what
they think about implementing CRM on cloud and also share their experiences,
good and bad, about the same.
Until next time, keep reading, keep learning…
